CHAPTER LIII .-- --LOUIS XV., FRANCE IN THE COLONIES.

1745-1763.
France was already beginning to perceive her sudden abasement in Europe; the defaults of her generals as well as of her government sometimes struck the king himself; he threw the blame of it on the barrenness of his times.

"This age is not fruitful in great men," he wrote to Marshal Noailles: "you know that we miss subjects for all objects, and you have one before your eyes in the case of the army which certainly impresses me more than any other." Thus spoke Louis XV.

on the eve of the battle of Fontenoy Marshal Saxe was about to confer upon the French arms a transitory lustre; but the king, who loaded him with riches and honors, never forgot that he was not his born subject.

"I allow that Count Saxe is the best officer to command that we have," he would say; "but he is a Huguenot, he wants to be supreme, and he is always saying that, if he is thwarted, he will enter some other service.